Salad Theater
The ring of my mobile phone cut through the fluid state of my half-awake brain. I jolted up to answer it and heard my sister’s voice over the white noise of her car.
“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” she said. “I’m running late.”
“No worries,” I said, and after a pause added, “I’ve been late for the past year.”
I heard my sister muttering to the traffic around her, missing my attempt at hormonal humor.
“You might actually have fun,” she said before ending the call.
Maybe she had heard me.
I was about to nestle my cheek back into the couch, when I heard its voice in my head.
Get up, the couch seemed to say. You’re not finished.
“Traitor,” I said back under my breath.
I put the phone in the pocket of my yoga pants and hobbled over to the kitchen, my right hip still waking up. It’s true that I hadn’t finished the salad that I was making, but I wasn’t worried. Most of it was ready. Earlier in the afternoon, I massaged the kale with olive oil to soften the leaves. I baked salt-and-peppered cubes of squash. I roasted pepitas, and then tossed it all together with a homemade lemon herb dressing.
I made the salad for this evening’s potluck dinner party. My younger sister Hema had invited me to go with her and her 13-year-old daughter Asha, whose friend’s parents were hosting the party. I chose this recipe purposefully for the event, in the same way that I would have chosen a dress when I was younger. Healthy, colorful, sophisticated — this salad represented me, an aspirational me anyway.
I figured the other adult guests would be like my sister, 40-something parents, and 10 years younger than me. These are the mental calculations I made these days. I needed something to bridge the gap between them and me. Maybe they could ask me about the salad instead of asking me about the husband I no longer had and the kids I never had. Maybe there would be a single dad or another tag-along guest who would linger in conversation, as interested as I was in arcane topics like food anthropology. My brain fast-forwarded to a fantasy future where I had found love again, in my 50s, over a salad.
Lost in thought, I tossed the salad with a pair of tongs. I watched the kale turn verdant somersaults, oiled with a sheen like sun-touched skin.
You’re running out of time, the kale seemed to whisper.
Quite right. I hadn’t yet mixed in the salad’s pièce de resistance — pomegranate seeds. A juicy balance of tart and sweet, they would balance the bitter kale and starchy squash. And while I had sipped pomegranate martinis and eaten pomegranate sorbet, I had never actually made food with pomegranates. I was aching to do something new.
But right now, the pomegranate seeds were still locked inside the pomegranate fruit, which was still sitting whole on my kitchen counter. I picked it up, lifted it to my face, and stared at it. And then in a random act, I kissed it. I smiled, imagining my ex-husband laughing at such whimsy. He used to find me funny, until about year ago, when he suddenly didn’t. I stared at the fruit’s crimson skin, which seemed to reply:
I’m complicated on the inside. Don’t underestimate me.
I knew that de-seeding the pomegranate would take work. I could not just slice the fruit in half. That would pierce the seeds, called arils, and the crimson juice inside would get everywhere and make the salad soggy. Instead, I would have to coax clumps of seeds away from the spongy white membrane to which they were attached. Yesterday I had watched several videos with techniques on how to do this, and I settled on one that advised that I halve the pomegranate, turn it upside down and tap it firmly with a spoon. Gravity would release the seeds from the fruit. I believed that this technique would work, having experienced first-hand the effects of the earth’s gravitational force, as it tugged at my skin and compressed my spine.
In my research, I learned that one pomegranate contained one cup of seeds. The recipe called for one cup of seeds. Armed with my powers of deductive reasoning, I went to the store this morning and bought exactly one pomegranate. In hindsight, I should have bought two and not taken a nap.
With a sharpened knife, I cut lightly around the fruit’s middle, careful to pierce only its skin. Then, I pried apart the fruit with a gentle grip to reveal two open-faced halves with ruby-red seeds. They glistened with juice, unlike me, desiccating by the day.
Catch me if you can, the mischievous seeds seemed to say.
I gave the fruit a strong tap, like the video said, but only one seed dropped out. Missing the bowl, it rolled along the countertop and onto the floor, leaving behind a trail of red juice. I tried a gentler touch, but no other seeds followed. Was I doing something wrong? It had worked in the video. The pith clutching the seeds seemed to taunt me with the lyrics of an early 1990s Cypress Hill song.
Insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain.
I tapped harder, harder, to a beat now stuck in my head. A few more seeds fell, but so did a fine red mist, pooling at the bottom of the bowl. I was freeing the seeds but breaking the skin. If I continued this way, I wouldn’t have enough seeds for my salad. My panic was interrupted by a buzzing on my thigh from my phone in my pocket.
“Traffic heavy. 30 minutes ETA,” messaged my sister.
I resented the blue bubbles of text passive-aggressively dictating my schedule. A flush of stress raced up my chest, angry at the free flow of time that I could not slow down. I felt stuck. ‘No pressure’ had failed to work, and so too had ‘too much pressure.’
Another alert from my phone.
“Traffic better. Be there in 20. I’ll send Asha up to get you,” she said.
And now I really was running out of time.
I started to fear that I couldn’t pull off this recipe. My catastrophizing mind shuffled through worst-case scenarios as I wiped away the sweat beading on my upper lip. I could go to the party emptyhanded, but that would be rude. I could run out to the corner store, but I felt 25 years too old to bring chips and salsa to a dinner party. No, I had to make something.
An idea popped into my whirring head. I could make an easier salad by switching out the fruit. I had a couple of green apples. They were easy to chop and would go great in a salad. I started to grab them from the fruit bowl, when they spat back at me with the true bitterness of their Granny Smith.
Don’t settle for apples when you want pomegranate, they seemed to say.
“Thank you,” I said back. “Thank you.” I became conscious that I was speaking to a fruit bowl.
With 20 minutes until my sister arrived, I lifted half of the pomegranate with my sticky hands. I studied the patterns of seeds and slowly dislodged them. Ten seeds dropped to the bottom of the bowl. And then 20 more. Ah, the euphoria of success. I was in the zone, my hands dripping with pomegranate juice. The half-pomegranate became harder to hold, but I would not stop, not for anything, until the half-pomegranate slipped out of my hands.
It made a thud, as the last remining seeds fell onto the dirty floor.
I curse you, it seemed to say.
“I curse you back!”
My scream echoed through a barren apartment, still half empty with half a couple’s stuff. Tears started to fill my eyes. I had become accustomed to impromptu tears of anger, sadness, frustration, and just straight up biological readjustment. But salt and bitterness were not ingredients in this salad. Now was not the time.
Wiping away the tears with my sleeve, I turned to the 2nd half of the pomegranate that was still on the counter with the only seeds that I had left. I continued to extract them as time ticked on, and with it, the time I had allotted to get dressed up. I was conscious that I was still wearing black athleisure.
Just give up, my pants seemed to say.
No, I would not give up. I had a mission to accomplish. Finally, I got the remaining seeds in the bowl and tossed them all in the salad. It wasn’t a whole cup, but it was close.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. I opened it with wet hands, bits of red and white fruit lodged under my chipped red fingernails. Before me stood my niece, breathless from running up the stairs to my apartment. I proactively leaned in to give her cheek an air kiss and dodge the gloopy red gloss on her lips. She responded with a giant hug scented with strawberry hair conditioner and strolled over to the kitchen table to peer into the salad bowl.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Kale and squash salad.” I paused, “and pomegranate.” I waited for a response, a harbinger for the rest of the evening.
“Better than what we brought,” she said. “We got chips and salsa from the store.”
I smiled spitefully on the inside, and then I admitted to her that I still needed a few minutes to get ready.
“I’ll text my mom,” said Asha, as she plopped down onto the couch, her scarlet coat spreading out on the cushions.
And before I could respond, she disappeared into the timeless vortex of her phone.
I imagined her mother’s car with red blinkers and a smoking tailpipe in the carport below. Tick. Tick. Tick. I rushed towards my bedroom to dab on some makeup and throw on a faux-fur jacket over my athleisure. Me, as is, would have to do.
At least the salad was perfect.
“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” she said. “I’m running late.”
“No worries,” I said, and after a pause added, “I’ve been late for the past year.”
I heard my sister muttering to the traffic around her, missing my attempt at hormonal humor.
“You might actually have fun,” she said before ending the call.
Maybe she had heard me.
I was about to nestle my cheek back into the couch, when I heard its voice in my head.
Get up, the couch seemed to say. You’re not finished.
“Traitor,” I said back under my breath.
I put the phone in the pocket of my yoga pants and hobbled over to the kitchen, my right hip still waking up. It’s true that I hadn’t finished the salad that I was making, but I wasn’t worried. Most of it was ready. Earlier in the afternoon, I massaged the kale with olive oil to soften the leaves. I baked salt-and-peppered cubes of squash. I roasted pepitas, and then tossed it all together with a homemade lemon herb dressing.
I made the salad for this evening’s potluck dinner party. My younger sister Hema had invited me to go with her and her 13-year-old daughter Asha, whose friend’s parents were hosting the party. I chose this recipe purposefully for the event, in the same way that I would have chosen a dress when I was younger. Healthy, colorful, sophisticated — this salad represented me, an aspirational me anyway.
I figured the other adult guests would be like my sister, 40-something parents, and 10 years younger than me. These are the mental calculations I made these days. I needed something to bridge the gap between them and me. Maybe they could ask me about the salad instead of asking me about the husband I no longer had and the kids I never had. Maybe there would be a single dad or another tag-along guest who would linger in conversation, as interested as I was in arcane topics like food anthropology. My brain fast-forwarded to a fantasy future where I had found love again, in my 50s, over a salad.
Lost in thought, I tossed the salad with a pair of tongs. I watched the kale turn verdant somersaults, oiled with a sheen like sun-touched skin.
You’re running out of time, the kale seemed to whisper.
Quite right. I hadn’t yet mixed in the salad’s pièce de resistance — pomegranate seeds. A juicy balance of tart and sweet, they would balance the bitter kale and starchy squash. And while I had sipped pomegranate martinis and eaten pomegranate sorbet, I had never actually made food with pomegranates. I was aching to do something new.
But right now, the pomegranate seeds were still locked inside the pomegranate fruit, which was still sitting whole on my kitchen counter. I picked it up, lifted it to my face, and stared at it. And then in a random act, I kissed it. I smiled, imagining my ex-husband laughing at such whimsy. He used to find me funny, until about year ago, when he suddenly didn’t. I stared at the fruit’s crimson skin, which seemed to reply:
I’m complicated on the inside. Don’t underestimate me.
I knew that de-seeding the pomegranate would take work. I could not just slice the fruit in half. That would pierce the seeds, called arils, and the crimson juice inside would get everywhere and make the salad soggy. Instead, I would have to coax clumps of seeds away from the spongy white membrane to which they were attached. Yesterday I had watched several videos with techniques on how to do this, and I settled on one that advised that I halve the pomegranate, turn it upside down and tap it firmly with a spoon. Gravity would release the seeds from the fruit. I believed that this technique would work, having experienced first-hand the effects of the earth’s gravitational force, as it tugged at my skin and compressed my spine.
In my research, I learned that one pomegranate contained one cup of seeds. The recipe called for one cup of seeds. Armed with my powers of deductive reasoning, I went to the store this morning and bought exactly one pomegranate. In hindsight, I should have bought two and not taken a nap.
With a sharpened knife, I cut lightly around the fruit’s middle, careful to pierce only its skin. Then, I pried apart the fruit with a gentle grip to reveal two open-faced halves with ruby-red seeds. They glistened with juice, unlike me, desiccating by the day.
Catch me if you can, the mischievous seeds seemed to say.
I gave the fruit a strong tap, like the video said, but only one seed dropped out. Missing the bowl, it rolled along the countertop and onto the floor, leaving behind a trail of red juice. I tried a gentler touch, but no other seeds followed. Was I doing something wrong? It had worked in the video. The pith clutching the seeds seemed to taunt me with the lyrics of an early 1990s Cypress Hill song.
Insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain.
I tapped harder, harder, to a beat now stuck in my head. A few more seeds fell, but so did a fine red mist, pooling at the bottom of the bowl. I was freeing the seeds but breaking the skin. If I continued this way, I wouldn’t have enough seeds for my salad. My panic was interrupted by a buzzing on my thigh from my phone in my pocket.
“Traffic heavy. 30 minutes ETA,” messaged my sister.
I resented the blue bubbles of text passive-aggressively dictating my schedule. A flush of stress raced up my chest, angry at the free flow of time that I could not slow down. I felt stuck. ‘No pressure’ had failed to work, and so too had ‘too much pressure.’
Another alert from my phone.
“Traffic better. Be there in 20. I’ll send Asha up to get you,” she said.
And now I really was running out of time.
I started to fear that I couldn’t pull off this recipe. My catastrophizing mind shuffled through worst-case scenarios as I wiped away the sweat beading on my upper lip. I could go to the party emptyhanded, but that would be rude. I could run out to the corner store, but I felt 25 years too old to bring chips and salsa to a dinner party. No, I had to make something.
An idea popped into my whirring head. I could make an easier salad by switching out the fruit. I had a couple of green apples. They were easy to chop and would go great in a salad. I started to grab them from the fruit bowl, when they spat back at me with the true bitterness of their Granny Smith.
Don’t settle for apples when you want pomegranate, they seemed to say.
“Thank you,” I said back. “Thank you.” I became conscious that I was speaking to a fruit bowl.
With 20 minutes until my sister arrived, I lifted half of the pomegranate with my sticky hands. I studied the patterns of seeds and slowly dislodged them. Ten seeds dropped to the bottom of the bowl. And then 20 more. Ah, the euphoria of success. I was in the zone, my hands dripping with pomegranate juice. The half-pomegranate became harder to hold, but I would not stop, not for anything, until the half-pomegranate slipped out of my hands.
It made a thud, as the last remining seeds fell onto the dirty floor.
I curse you, it seemed to say.
“I curse you back!”
My scream echoed through a barren apartment, still half empty with half a couple’s stuff. Tears started to fill my eyes. I had become accustomed to impromptu tears of anger, sadness, frustration, and just straight up biological readjustment. But salt and bitterness were not ingredients in this salad. Now was not the time.
Wiping away the tears with my sleeve, I turned to the 2nd half of the pomegranate that was still on the counter with the only seeds that I had left. I continued to extract them as time ticked on, and with it, the time I had allotted to get dressed up. I was conscious that I was still wearing black athleisure.
Just give up, my pants seemed to say.
No, I would not give up. I had a mission to accomplish. Finally, I got the remaining seeds in the bowl and tossed them all in the salad. It wasn’t a whole cup, but it was close.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. I opened it with wet hands, bits of red and white fruit lodged under my chipped red fingernails. Before me stood my niece, breathless from running up the stairs to my apartment. I proactively leaned in to give her cheek an air kiss and dodge the gloopy red gloss on her lips. She responded with a giant hug scented with strawberry hair conditioner and strolled over to the kitchen table to peer into the salad bowl.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Kale and squash salad.” I paused, “and pomegranate.” I waited for a response, a harbinger for the rest of the evening.
“Better than what we brought,” she said. “We got chips and salsa from the store.”
I smiled spitefully on the inside, and then I admitted to her that I still needed a few minutes to get ready.
“I’ll text my mom,” said Asha, as she plopped down onto the couch, her scarlet coat spreading out on the cushions.
And before I could respond, she disappeared into the timeless vortex of her phone.
I imagined her mother’s car with red blinkers and a smoking tailpipe in the carport below. Tick. Tick. Tick. I rushed towards my bedroom to dab on some makeup and throw on a faux-fur jacket over my athleisure. Me, as is, would have to do.
At least the salad was perfect.
Jan / Feb 2024
Narasu Rebbapragada (she/her) is a writer and marketer living in San Francisco, California. She turned to fiction a few years ago as a way to ride the roller coasters of her inner and outer worlds. A former magazine editor, her non-fiction stories have appeared in The San Francisco Examiner, PC World, and Sonoma Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Forum Literary Magazine.
Art: Donna Morello, Collage